Cryptocurrency has continued to remain a hot topic in 2021 and as the year ends Prime Minister Narendra Modi's brief Twitter account hack once again placed the digital currency in limelight.
PM Modi's Twitter account was "very briefly compromised," said his office on Sunday. During that point, Mr Modi's account tweeted that India had adopted Bitcoin and would
be distributing the digital money.
"The matter was escalated to Twitter and the account was quickly secured," the Indian Prime Minister's office tweeted on Sunday adding "In the brief period that the account
was compromised, any Tweet shared must be ignored."
The now-deleted tweet read that "India has officially accepted bitcoin as legal tender. The government has officially bought 500 BTC" and would be "distributing them to all
residents of the country." A possible scam link was also attached to the tweet.
The incident came at a time when India is considering banning cryptocurrency.
Modi's government announced last month that it has been working on a law that would "prohibit any private cryptocurrencies in India." However, the bill's description states
that it would enable "certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses."
Amid the uncertainty for crypto holders in India, here is a throwback to the list of crypto apps that googled had banned recently for tricking its users.
After being discovered to be fraudulent and tricking users into watching advertisements, Google Play deleted eight deceptive bitcoin apps. These apps claimed to be cryptocurrency cloud mining
apps, allowing users to earn bitcoin by investing in a cloud mining operation.
These eight malicious apps, according to Trend Micro, fooled victims into watching advertisements, paying for subscription services with an average monthly charge of $15 (approximately Rs.
1,100), and paying for increased mining capabilities without receiving anything in return.
These apps are-
BitFunds – Crypto Cloud Mining
Bitcoin Miner – Cloud Mining
Bitcoin (BTC) – Pool Mining Cloud Wallet
Crypto Holic – Bitcoin Cloud Mining
Daily Bitcoin Rewards – Cloud Based Mining System
Bitcoin 2021
MineBit Pro - Crypto Cloud Mining & btc miner
Ethereum (ETH) - Pool Mining Cloud.
Two of these malicious apps were even paid, according to Trend Micro. This technique was implemented to acquire the user's trust.
Crypto Holic – Bitcoin Cloud Mining was $12.99 (approximately Rs. 960) to download, according to Trend Micro, while Daily Bitcoin Rewards – Cloud Based Mining System was $5.99.
(roughly Rs. 450).
According to the firm, these counterfeit apps did not engage in cryptocurrency mining. They allegedly used a local mining simulation programme with a counter and certain random operations
to carry out fake mining activity. According to Trend Micro, these apps enticed users to pay for higher cryptocurrency mining capabilities via in-app billing systems that range from $14.99 (approximately Rs. 1,111) to $189.99
(about Rs. 14,000).